Unbundling
I am preoccupied, as I often am
with thoughts of rope and you.
a line of drool
connects you
to the floor where you are not
not anymore.
Flash Stories
A well furnished room
There is something uncanny about rooms you dont choose, a sterile quality, like a dorm room. You lay down in the bed and feel you could be anyone, anyone who had been there before. An anonymous person in an anonymous place. But I have written about this before.
I’m sitting at a table I didn’t choose, watching the woman with long, black hair tap her slender fingers on the page of my notebook. She comes here twice a week to teach me to speak, but really she comes to learn. Her hungry eyes learn the shape of my face, her hungry mouth the taste of my cheek, and her fingers learn the shapes of mine. Three thick bibles, the maximum legal number, sit proudly on the shelf next to us, nearly burning with an intense feeling of danger. She has never opened one, and the thought thrills her. “All foreigners love Jeesu, right?” she asks me. “Love is a strong word.” I say.
Those long, slow evenings unfolded like a flower as we translated secrets. I watched her intently as she took her first bite of spaghetti, her face screwed up in fear before she put it in her mouth. She laughed as I tried stinky tofu. We started to take long walks at night, gleefully pointing to objects and saying their names, like children. Eventually she pulled me into an alley and taught me a new verb, 亲吻.
One night she came to me with tears in her eyes, and asked me again about “Jeesu.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her he wouldn’t be able to help with this problem, so I lied. And then we said goodbye. Months later I drove for two days to watch her marry a man she didn’t choose. She looked radiant in red, with flowers in her hair, and sadness in her eyes. But she told me proudly she was no longer a left behind woman, no longer a spinster at 26 years old.
I often wonder what things we choose, and what things come to us like a pre-selected table in a furnished apartment. Today, I say that I just don’t know. I struggle to find the degrees of freedom, and the limits of fate. But I find some familiar things, my rope, the old book, and I choose to forget the problem for a while.
Or do I?
Early Poems
The Wide Feeling
A shadow comes to greet the flat,
slides up the steps and spooks a rat.
Its knuckles graze the red-brick wall,
its heavy feet thump down the hall.
This walking dream, this shaking hand,
spills milky coffee in The Strand.
Those other hands, the hands of men
come grip and steady, pin and tend.
A thousand miles in the air,
it spots a single silver hair.
From down a well, it hears a voice
with Yiddish, Polish, British poise.
A banging door, a pounding fist,
a Brooklyn landlord won’t be missed.
Wide saucer eyes blink in the sun,
an eerie, early Spring has sprung.
The dreamer asks, but cannot know.
So many metro stops to go.
Its eyes reflect electric hugs,
the glowing screen, a constant tug.
Which is the dream- the girl? the place?
Her words seive out, are lost to space.
Her heart, she thinks, is beating loud,
her shoulder presses through the crowd.
Her head, she thinks, feels awfully wide
her shoulder turns, her face to hide.
While all the lives she’s lived before,
sit tucked inside a kitchen drawer.
A shift .
Clings softly to her slender legs
Below her gaze our city begs
A baijou kiss begins to burn
And linger as she takes her turn
The air carries the smells of fruit
As beauty takes her flight in jute .
Perspective twists me upside down
Hair rising coyly from my crown
The boy we bought sits in the corner
Closely watch the curious foreigner
The air carries a hint of chill
Soon we will face that bitter pill .
Of winter clawing out of fall
Driving your car I feel too tall
The burning trees announce the season
Orange leaves bright beyond reason
The switch of time and place and mood
Confirms a changing attitude .
And beside me in bed you shift
Together, yet we start to drift
Begun
The girl has her eyes closed, not softly like a sleeping lady, but tight. Fighting the feeling and looking uncomely as the up and coming young cummer pokes around in her basement. A basement, damp and smelling of old newspaper. The tapering candle drips as she is walking on a dusty street. Meet her there, well met, when a door wheezes open and draws her inside. Besides, the slick lanes glitter darkly in the dim lighting and bowling balls sit like gravestones here and there in the haphazard ways of poor teeth. Beneath her they cast strange shadows on the floor, long like a fishing pole from a thing so round as her head.
Dead. She thinks she might be dead, or dying at the very least. The priest is anointing her with oil, dripping it sensually down her temples and listening to her dreary warble. Marble, she left hers on the floor of that abandoned bowling alley, spit out for its bad taste and walked home with a new noggin. Toboggan, she is pitched down the hill behind the school, wind whipping her cheeks to a cherry red. Bed, she is finding hers, pulling covers up to her chin. Sin, rip them down and the ball rolls off.
Doff your cap young suitor, don’t you know who you’re trying to impress? Address her kindly and you’ll get her on her knees. They’re the bees. The bee gees play from a jukebox in the corner, something corny that makes them giggle into their white Russians. Discussions, how does one discuss with a statue? Debut little debutante, let’s get you shined up and ready to go! Oh no, please don’t ask me that, I just wanted to kick your tires and take you for a spin.
Begin.
boshai 